Power conversion systems convert electrical power from one form to another and may be employed in a variety of applications such as motor drives for powering an electric motor using power from an input source. Typically, the power converter is constructed using electrical switches actuated in a controlled fashion to selectively convert input power to output power of a desired form such as single or multi-phase AC of a controlled amplitude, frequency and phase to drive an AC motor according to a desired speed and/or torque profile, often in the presence of varying load conditions. In a typical situation, one or more AC motor drives are connected to an AC power bus or point of common coupling along with other loads where a common AC power source provides current to all these loads via the common bus. The AC drives may be equipped with power factor correction (PFC) apparatus to operate the drive at or near unity power factor. In such systems, however, there are multiple loads connected to the common power connection, and the system as a whole will often not be operating at or near unity power factor, even of the motor drives themselves are power factor corrected. For instance, one load may be operating at a leading power factor while others operate at a lagging power factor, such that even though one or more motor drive loads may operate at or near unity power factor, the overall system does not. In this regard, inductive loads, such as electric motors consume reactive power and capacitors supply reactive power to the system, where the reactive power is characterized in terms of volt-amps reactive or VARs. In the past, system power factor could be controlled to a certain extent by various means, such as by switching banks of capacitors onto the common power connection to cancel inductive load effects (e.g. electric motor loads) or by switching in reactors (inductors) to cancel capacitive loading effects. Dedicated devices, known as static VAR compensators (SVCs), may be connected to the system bus for the purpose of controlling the system power factor. However, these devices occupy space and add to the cost of operating the overall system. Thus, there is a need for improved techniques for controlling the power factor of systems having multiple loads powered by a common power source.